The present invention is related to a method, an apparatus, and a communication system for setting up a communication session. More particularly, the invention relates to a telephone or conference connection and allows the participating users a sophisticated identification.
The development in the field of communication built new standards in the last couple of years. For example, the analog telephone technology switched to a digital technology that opens new fields and possibilities. Single media-types, e.g. text, speech, data-files, or even video, are merging more and more through new multimedia technologies and thereby creating interesting new applications.
In e-mail communication, the subject line is an important feature to both the sender and the receiver of the e-mail message. With the information contained in this field, the sender usually tries to draw the attention of the recipient to the purposes of the message. The receiver of an e-mail message can use the content of this field to evaluate the importance of the message and to decide whether to read it immediately or later.
With current telephone systems, there is however no feature available that is equivalent to the e-mail subject line. At most, what can be sent to the called party is the telephone number of the calling party, if the respective telephone set has a display. This information may help the called party to decide whether he/she should answer the call. For example, a calling line identification that is the number of the calling party""s telephone is sent in the integrated service digital network (ISDN) in the out-of-band D-channel that is used for call control signaling.
In some systems, the calling party""s number is also used to select the ringing tones or to retrieve the name and/or photo of the calling person, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,899,358.
Exploiting the calling party""s number as described above has two weaknesses:
The information content of the calling party""s number is limited. It may tell the called party who is calling; it is not possible for example to tell him the reasons or purposes of the call.
In some cases the information may be misleading as to xe2x80x9cwho is callingxe2x80x9d, since only the calling party""s number is provided and not by the actual calling person. If Jane is using Bob""s phone to call Joe, her call will be displayed at Joe""s phone set as a call from Bob.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,821,874 is related to a messaging terminal with voice notification. A method for receiving and processing an incoming message in a wireless messaging terminal is disclosed.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,276,731 is described a method and apparatus for handling incoming telephone calls. The method can be used for delivering predetermined messages to predetermined calling parties or predetermined, prioritized screening of incoming telephone calls, and for rerouting incoming telephone calls the basis of predetermined selection criteria
An emergency phone messaging system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,710,803. This system is provided for automatically dialing and sending out a pre-recorded message in emergency situations to Police, Fire, or Ambulance departments at the push of a single button.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,481,594 describes an audio caller identification unit which is connected between a user""s telephone an a telephone exchange providing calling party identification, such as calling number or name.
In the following, two standards, H.323 and Q.931, are addressed.
H.323 is a multimedia teleconferencing standard and was originally developed as an adaptation of H.320, which addresses videoconferencing over ISDN and other circuit switched networks and services. Since H.320 was ratified, in 1990, corporations have increasingly implemented Local Area Networks (LANs) and LAN gateways to the Wide Area Network (WAN). H.323 has evolved beyond a logical and necessary extension of the H.320 standard to include Corporate Intranets and packet-switched networks generally. H.323 utilizes the Real-Time Protocol (RTP/RTCP) from the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force), along with internationally standardized codecs. With the ratification of version 2, H.323 is also being used for video and other communications, over the Internet. In common with the other ITU multimedia teleconferencing standard, H.323 applies to multipoint and point-to-point sessions. More details about H.323 can be found in: ITU-T, xe2x80x9cRecommendation H.323 (02/98)xe2x80x94Packet-based multimedia communications systemsxe2x80x9d, Geneva, February 1998.
Q.931 is an Integrated Service Digital Network (ISDN) specification that has been designed for control signaling and thus is only used on the D channel. It is used to establish maintain and release connections on B channels. It is a protocol between the user and the network. More details about Q.931 can be found in: ITU-T, xe2x80x9cRecommendation Q.931 (03/93)xe2x80x94Digital Subscriber Signalling System No. 1 (DSS 1)xe2x80x94ISDN user-network interface layer 3 specification for basic call controlxe2x80x9d, Geneva, March 1993.
It is an object of the invention to provide a method which allows the initiator of a phone call to attach to his/her call a xe2x80x9csubjectxe2x80x9d object. At the called party""s side the subject object can then be xe2x80x9crenderedxe2x80x9d, thus giving to the called party more information about the reasons or purposes of the call.
The present invention relates generally to a communication session, more specifically, to the set up of a telephone call between a calling party and a called party. Hence, a call-related information that is determined from the calling party is transmitted to the called party and identifies the calling party or the purpose of the call. The use of the term xe2x80x9ca communication sessionxe2x80x9d is meant all activities which take place during the establishment, maintenance, and release of a call. According to the invention at least two persons participate on a session. Furthermore, such a session can be a text chat call that usually takes place via the Internet.
The xe2x80x9csubjectxe2x80x9d object attached to a phone call may be of any kind, e.g. a line of text, an audio file, an video file, a bitmap, a photo or image, an animation, some means of identity proof, etc. It may be also a combination of multiple objects, e.g. a line of text and the corresponding audio file. The calling party either creates such an object or selects it for example from a repository.
There are two methods of how the xe2x80x9csubjectxe2x80x9d object can be transferred to a destination:
1. The xe2x80x9csubjectxe2x80x9d object itself and its type is encoded within a signaling message which is sent from the calling to the called party during the call setup phase. For example, in Q.931-based signaling system like ISDN or H.323, the signaling message in question may be the SETUP message; in the session initiation protocol (SIP) the xe2x80x9csubjectxe2x80x9d would be sent in the INVITE message. The MIME (Multipart Internet Mail Extension) encoding scheme used in e-mail systems for file attachment can be used to encode the object. At the destination side, the xe2x80x9csubjectxe2x80x9d object is then xe2x80x9cdisplayedxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9crenderedxe2x80x9d to the called party at call offering time. For a wider range of applications some standards should be extended.
2. Only a reference to the xe2x80x9csubjectxe2x80x9d object, e.g. its URL (Uniform Resource Locator), is sent within the signaling message mentioned in method 1 above. Upon receiving the signaling message containing the URL, the destination endsystem will download the encoded object from the location indicated by the URL and xe2x80x9crenderxe2x80x9d it to the called user at call offering time. This second method is interesting in case the size of the encoded object is too large for being included into the signaling message.
The following can be achieved with a xe2x80x9csubjectxe2x80x9d object attached to a phone call: indication of who is calling (via text, audio/video clip, photo, . . . ), authentication of the calling party, e.g., recognition of the voice of the calling party, indication of the purposes of the call indication of urgent or emergency calls, transfer of a real-time short message (text, audio, video, . . . ) then hang up, whereas a message in e-mail or GSM is not real-time.
As mentioned, at the destination side the xe2x80x9csubjectxe2x80x9d object can be xe2x80x9cdisplayedxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9crenderedxe2x80x9d to the called party. The term xe2x80x9cdisplayxe2x80x9d is used in a very general sense of xe2x80x9cprocessing the content of the objectxe2x80x9d. The outcome of the processing may lead to a call offering (ringing), possibly with some kind of information display, or to a re-direction of the call to another destination, e.g. in a call center case to an agent which is more competent on the subject, but also to the rejection of the call.
Similar to the xe2x80x9csubjectxe2x80x9d object sent from the calling to the called party, the called party can also send an object to the calling party as an immediate reply to his call, e.g. indicating why he/she cannot answer the call yet, proposing another time for calling him.
If the call-related information has been defined by a calling person or selected, then the advantage occurs, that a called person knows exactly who is sending the call and can decide whether he/she takes the call or not.
When the call-related information comprises an indication of the purpose of the session or an indication of the urgency of said session, then the advantage occurs, that the called person knows already the topic of the session and is prepared, or in case of an emergency the called person can handle immediately.
The call-related information are creatable by identifying the calling person through a sensor, e.g. a voice-analyzer, a scanner, a camera, or the like, which provides a huge variety of creating the call-related information.
If the call-related information is transformed to a visible, audible, tactile, smellable, or tastable information and is indicated as text, photo, image, graphic, animation, audio clip, video clip, combinations thereof or by initiating a device, then the advantage occurs, that the called person can be informed in different ways. This is especially advantageous for handicapped people.
When the call-related information is transmitted and the session is afterwards interrupted, then the advantage occurs, that the called person get a real-time information and can react immediately.
It is advantageous if the call-related information is transmitted during the establishment of a communication session, because the call-related information can be displayed, rendered, signalized, or outputted before the communication starts.
If the call-related information is processed by a called device to make a decision on the handling of the call, then the advantage occurs, that in a call center case, i.e. the called device belongs to a service station, the call-related information can be handled and processed in a more competent way, e.g. rendering only some kind of information, transforming the call-related information, routing the call to another destination, or even rejecting the call.